Encide was created by a small group of friends and I back in 2008. We all knew each other from other communities that came and went, and I wanted to maintain and mature the network we had all invested in. We quickly started considering name ideas and decided on “encide” after a few days worth of exploration. It is an invented name, reminiscent of the prepositional word inside. We often take advantage of that wordplay in our brand’s touchpoints though our logo lockups, visuals, and copy.

When we first launched a basic version of the website in early 2008, we used some temporary logos and icons. A year later, Jeff Nielsen, who also came up with the encide name, casually created an ec monogram that we adopted and used for several years. Eventually, as I grew as a designer, I wanted to create a more comprehensive brand identity system. In mid 2012, I began to casually draft logo ideas after my day job. A few thousands of hours later, I completely rebuilt the Encide brand, website, and social media experiences from the ground up in the largest project of my life. I document and show the story in complete detail though this monumental brand guideline document. It has 50 pages of richly detailed information, visuals, and even behind-the-scenes bonuses. I also included raw vector concepts from the earliest explorations up until now since I never really turned off the creative process, even though the current logo is shockingly closer to my strict definition of perfection than I ever expected to reach.